Historically retailers have had a distinct advantage in the battle for a shopper's mental real estate. Why? Only because they had no competition. Once a shopper enters your store they had no opportunity to seek information from another source until they left your store.
Today this is changing. Shoppers are becoming increasingly empowered by the iPhone-enabled mobile web. (Note that I intentionally left all other mobile devices out of this list due to their immature app platforms.)
Time is running out on retailers. There is a window of opportunity in which they can either commit (and correspondingly write large checks to build out in-store hardware networks) or fade into irrelevence. An in-store network investment will ultimately be embraced by (and paid for) by the brands using it to communicate but the retailer must take the first step. The retailer MUST make a bold decision to build a network FOR THEIR SHOPPERS in order to avoid the shopper's other (increasingly functional) option: a private, mobile network in which the shopper chooses any and all information they see within the brick and mortar shopping experience.
The clock is ticking...
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